Rasch Validation of the Revised Body Awareness Rating Questionnaire (BARQ-R) in Adults with Musculoskeletal Pain, Adults with Spinal Cord Injury, and Community-Dwelling Adults in the US

BackgroundTo establish Rasch validation of the Revised Body Awareness Rating Questionnaire (BARQ-R) in adults with musculoskeletal pain, community-dwelling adults without pain, and adults with spinal cord injury (SCI) who have neuropathic pain. Materials and MethodThe BARQ-R has 12 items with scores ranging from 0 (completely disagree) to 3 (completely agree). Through Rasch analysis, we evaluated unidimensionality through item and person fit, targeting of the population, person separation reliability (PSR), local item dependence (LID), and principal components analysis of residuals (PCAR). ResultsThe BARQ-R in adults with musculoskeletal pain (n=152; average age = 52.26{+/-}16.13 years) showed good targeting (person mean location: -0.36{+/-}0.88 logits), minimal floor effect (0.01%), and no ceiling effect (0.00%) and had good reliability (PSR=0.75). The BARQ-R in community-dwelling adults (n=471; average age = 49.63{+/-}17.57 years) had a person mean location of -0.62{+/-}1.09 logits, minimal floor (2.63%), and minimal ceiling effect (0.43%) after rescoring 2 items and deleting 3 items and had good reliability (PSR=0.74). The BARQ-R in adults with SCI-related neuropathic pain (n=44; average age = 55.45{+/-}13.47 years) showed good targeting after rescoring 7 items (person mean location: -0.33{+/-}0.71 logits), no floor effect (0.00%) or ceiling effect (0.00%) but had poor reliability (PSR=0.65). ConclusionsThe BARQ-R shows sufficient fit to be used in clinical settings for group decision-making for both adults with musculoskeletal pain and community-dwelling adults. However, in adults with SCI-related neuropathic pain, preliminary Rasch analysis of the BARQ-R showed low reliability and therefore the BARQ-R is not recommended for clinical use in that population. Validation in larger groups of adults with SCI as well as more diverse samples are needed.